


Muted Yellow Wallpaper

by 13letters



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A Pinch of Angst, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Ice Cream, Love Story, Marauders: assemble!, Marriage Proposal, Ostentacious James Pining Potter, Socks, petrichor - Freeform, wizarding war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:25:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8725459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: "But I can promise that there will be days where all I think of is you, Lily. And how you changed me."Or how there's a softness at the end of August, how all she's doing is folding laundry, and he can't help himself. He drops to his knees.





	

He learns that sweeping, grandiose gestures aren't the stuff of toe-curling romance.

He learns how after a long day's work, Lily makes these soft humming noises when he chastely massages out the knots in her shoulderblades, too, non-medial but linear to her spine where her focused intent gets her all rigid and cramped throughout the day.

He learns that sweetness starts to mean more than sex, and he'll never forget how the first time he kissed her on the forehead, she got all willowy and weak-kneed and had to forcibly breathe, grab onto his arm to steady herself.

He learns and realizes that this isn't the first time he's fancied himself in love, but the last time he thinks to be sorry for it.

Sometimes Lily hates him; sometimes he thinks she regrets this, letting him in, letting herself love him, but they've stopped being so fearless in the night. It seems the sun takes longer to rise somedays now that sad, weird events keep riddling their world, yet it's times like these that reflect the first pact he ever made.

Three boys before they were four, a disgrace, a monster, and a poster child for sarcasm as a coping/defense mechanism: Sirius, Remus, James. They swore to just hold on. Hold tight. Keep going through curses and moonlight and the once Sirius started to cry with a tub of ice cream in his hands while Remus was folding socks.

Hold together, and that's what he and Lily do the nights they sleep with the window open, when she forgets to lay a towel in front of the window downstairs and rain soaks through the carpet. Spreads the scent of petrichor as wholesome as the sounds of the gentle raindrops on the roof. The dew on the grass. The condensation on his coffee mug, because she gets up early enough to make it, to watch the rays of sunlight shine over the City and bathe a dark day in something a little right.

He learns love isn't grandeur and splendor.

Love first tasted like an _I'm sorry_ when he was seventeen. An _I didn't mean to hurt you_ when he was eighteen. Felt like a slap that left him recoiling, her voice spat like venom, _you should have thought of that, then,_ and oh. The first time love tastes like pumpkin juice, like the yellow flowers in that meadow she brought him to.

Love felt like her hands in his hair getting it all messy just the way she likes, her dimples all quirked, his glasses drooping down the tip of her nose.

"I can't see," he lied, 'cause all she is was colored in reds and greens and beauty and his -- when she first began to consider it, when love made them just a little fearless.

Or not, because he's been carrying a ring in a tiny blue velvet box for three and a half weeks now. He went with Sirius, Peter, and Remus individually, gauged each of their reactions when he just blurted it out, "I'm gonna marry her," went inside the jewelry shop with an anxious laugh and his hand in his hair.

Remus was his first call. The parental, responsible one who always made sure homework was finished before they'd sneak out, who bothered to encourage _pleases_ and _thank yous_ , who was the real brains behind each right and wrong decision they ever made.

James didn't need assurance or permission, but he recognized how much Remus and his opinions mattered to him.

So when he shook his hand, congratulated him on doing something right, the future was pretty much set in stone, already guaranteed. He got him all up in arms, ready to say he did at an altar without ever having asked Lily.

Sirius was the next call.

And he sat with him in comfortable, slow silence for an hour, full of thought and apprehension and turmoil.

These Marauders, they always make the right decisions eventually, choose what's right in time before it dries up like raisins and pumpkins, sand under heated glass. Sirius didn't talk James out of it; he just sat there long enough for him to realize he didn't need to be talked into marrying Lily either.

Peter was the last, the _when?_ The _how?_ He reminded James of the variables he forgot, Lily not wanting to jeopardize work or school or a cause, not having to choose so having it all in the mean time.

"She likes discussing things first," Peter told him. "Maybe you should just talk to her first."

He was thinking to have Sirius carry the ring for him -as Padfoot- to Lily like an engagement scene in the movies.

Or fireworks lighting up wherever they'd be when she says yes. The scoreboard at the Cannons game would write out, Lily, will you marry James? As the crowd chorused in _awws_ and she would laugh it off, tell him to get off his knees before she realized he would mean it.

But she's just folding laundry. Something soft and natural and homey and tedious because a war is brewing and building and they have to make the world alright in just their small corner of each other they have.

He walks in like he always does, his legs taking too much room because he doesn't just walk, she thinks, _he saunters and he smirks_ , tie loosened, hair disheveled; the house a mess.

Routine too perfect and guaranteed to stop now. He's been on eggshells for weeks, thinking every second is the right one even though she's exhausted. And he's so bloody scared. Here in the living room. A photograph of them on the mantle, them arm-in-arm at Hogwarts and laughing for eternity, them frozen still in a sepia colored picture she forced her sister to take. Lackluster and monochrome. Still them.

Her just so beautiful. And his, even if she won't admit it because she's her own self's first, and that's more important. Before Lily and James, there was just Lily, the girl with perfect marks and a raunch sense of humor, a smile so sweet it would charm the pants off Merlin himself.

Maybe he was totally planning the Quidditch proposal, but he doesn't want to wait anymore.

She hasn't even asked him about his day before he decides it's high-time they're married and drops to his knees there on the floor, the shag maroon-colored carpet. He looks up at her and her food-stained shirt, her long red, red hair, and for once doesn't doubt or make light mockery of the incredulity that is her here with him -- loving him, like he doesn't deserve it.

"Lily," he says. She has to know what's coming. She has to, inexplicably going pink already like she's trying not to cry. Something in the intensity of him through glass lenses and years' worth of taking that shot, wondering _what if --_

"Lily," he repeats, 'cause if he doesn't now, then when will he crumble, feel the strain of his heart aching against his ribs? "I can't guarantee there won't be days where we don't want to kill each other, sweetheart," he swears. His voice is ragged already, nervous-sounding like he just swallowed a snitch.

"But I can promise that there will be days where all I think of is you, Lily. And how you changed me," she doesn't start to cry, but she's pretty damn close as she falls to her knees in front of him, lets him take her face in his hands because holding on, learning to let go,

" _James_ ," she interrupts like she's dying here, wrapping her fists around his sleeves. "I w--"

"-- You changed me," he says again. Tenderly, as slow as his smile, he wipes the corners of her eyes with the pads of his fingertips. "By inspiring me to be better. By loving me. I'm going to love you forever, Lily Evans," he says, do surely. So certain and so quiet that he's almost tomorrow, that they're almost forever. "Marry me," but it isn't demanding at all.

It'll be the softness of the end of August, a muted yellow wallpaper backdropping her hair, trees almost as red, red as her hair, two first years together in a boat of other scared children. Not brave enough to dive into the Lake, no, but bold enough to think about it, for him to mention diving in and petting the sea creature. Brave enough for her to chastise him, to tell him he was a fool, to go back there with him six years later.

To think about falling in love as easily as they could have jumped in the water, knowing love wasn't a fantastical miracle but the realization they could make it a free fall without having to worry about the jagged rocks at the bottom. Figuring out with each other that they didn't even need to close their eyes in the falling, that some things are like oceans and lakes, others the rain and the last dregs of sun rays pulled from the skyline. Trading each other her inhibition for his recklessness until he's her consideration and she's his unafraid.

"Yes," she whispers, tearing, pink, smiling so bright it's the sun in that moving picture, him wrapping his arms around her in the same way, "yes."


End file.
